Rules for Living, No. 2

Rule No. 2: "Human memory," in most places, is about thirty years. In a tight-knit family or particularly backward-looking organization, it may stretch as far as fifty or seventy years. But even the USA, one of the youngest and wildest countries in the world, has a history of two hundred years and more.

So always remember that "we've always done it this way" only means "our grandparents did it an entirely different way, but we've forgotten about that."